Pondo Pondering #4

Once again this week we had a Jr. High only camp. I took more time this week to really apply a little bit of what I've learned in my Ministry with Youth class to these kids. Kind of a verification of some of the stuff I've been learning about.

First, a quick little story that I found rather amusing. I was up in the game room watching the kids play Wii and ping pong and I had one kid who was really ok at ping pong. He kept trying to down play how well he played, just so he get people to play so that he could beat them. He played a kid or two, defeating each one of them pretty easily, but then another kid came up stairs and said that he'd play. I think that the first kid thought it would be another easy win, but the second kid obviously (or at least obviously to me) knew how to play. As such the first kid played rather sloppy at first until rather than hustling this kid like all the others, he was being hustled. It was just really interesting to watch.

Back to my observations for the weekend. The first thing I noticed was that these kids were definitely in their little groups and clicks. For anyone who works with younger children, you've probably noticed that kids don't do this as much. Don't get me wrong, they do get into groups, but rarely is it based off of commonality. A child can have one friend one day and another the next. It isn't until they start to reach that level around Jr. High that I've observed that they get into their little clicks that are usually based on similar likes (or dislikes). I saw little groups of "geeks," "preps," and any other click you could think of in the makings at camp this weekend. I'm not even sure these kids noticed that they were doing it. I think of all the things, the fact that they might not have been aware of it caught my attention the most. When I hang out, I know why I hang out with these people, yet these kids seemed oblivious to it. They just naturally gravitated towards a specific group of people.

Another thing that really stood out to be was the kids being competitive. At every event or activity the kids were always trying to make it into a competition. Doing so is natural to all people, but it just really stood out to me this weekend. There was always someone trying to establish dominance in whatever they were doing, from playing Wii or ping pong, to soccer or dodgeball. I think that as we get older we learn to control (or at least mask) this want to dominate others, unless it serves a purpose in letting it out.

One final thing of note was how much more active and daring the girls were. I ran the tube run for two of the three times that it was open and there was easily a 3-1 ratio of girls and guys. Now this could be just because there were more girls than guys, but I thought the ratio was pretty even. My thoughts on the issue is that at that stage of development (11-13 years old or so) the girls are at a more mature stage. We all know that girls start to develop earlier than guys, so these Jr. High girls could just be more mature that their male counterparts. Either way, it was rather obvious to me that the guys were much less daring than the girls. Not only did I have more girls participate in events and the tube run, but the girls were much more likely to do something like wanting to go backwards or get spinned.